The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories

DREAM HOUSE By Dulcie Gray

They sat side by side on the sofa in my office, and I thought I had never seen a more incongruous pair. She was enormously fat, and about fifty. He was small and thin, and obviously several years younger. She had a huge round face, brown eyes, and lank dark hair. His hair was sandy, and his eyes were a watery grey. She was monstrously plain. He was good-looking, in a neat, rather efficient way. She talked. He remained silent most of the time.

For a large woman, she was very vivacious. She waved her beautiful hands when she spoke, and when she laughed, which was often, she showed two rows of still excellent teeth. 'And so you see,' she said finally, 'we thought we'd come to you.'

'Yes indeed,' I murmured politely. 'I see.'

'It's not just a question of money, I have plenty, but my husband likes to work.

Her husband nodded expressionlessly.

'Not that he ever holds anything down for long. He seems to get bored, don't you Henry?'

Henry protested, 'My dear, that isn't strictly true…

'Well not bored exactly, but we like to travel and we do travel, don't we Henry?'

'You're used to it, my dear,' said Henry.

'Yes,' said the woman complacently. 'I'm used to it. I travelled as a girl you see, and my first husband was very well off, so I suppose I got the bug. I met Henry on one of my travels, didn't I Henry?'

'Yes dear.'

'Australia you know. I expect you could tell by the accent He's trying to get rid of it.'

I glanced at the man, but beyond a slight flickering of his sandy eyelashes, his face was still impassive.

The woman continued, 'So what can you do for us?'

'Well,' I said cautiously, 'your request is a little unusual, but you're perfectly right, the house is empty at the moment, though whether Lord Drummond wishes to let, I have no idea. However, if you will leave the problem with me, I'll see what I can do.'

'Good.' She rose splendidly. 'Will you please let me know, as soon as you have any information?'

'Of course,' I said, 'and I'll do my very best for you.'

'I'm sure you will.' She smiled at me graciously, drew her sable cape round her shoulders, and put on her gloves. 'Come Henry,' she said, and the two of them went out of the room.

I telephoned Lord Drummond almost immediately, and he seemed not averse to the idea. 'I'd have to know more about them of course, and I'd like references and so on, but it might be quite a good thing. The house fell empty when my agent's wife died, and I have no one in mind, as a replacement at the moment. It's a very isolated house, although it's on the estate, so they are unlikely to bother me, but would it bother them do you suppose? Are they townspeople? We'd better have a trial period I think, say eighteen months. One thing I would like to know though, is how they came to discover the house at all?'

I wrote to Mrs Denchworth, telling her what Lord Drummond had said, and including his enquiry and she replied by return of post, saying that she and her husband were delighted; especially her husband, who had set his heart on the house because he had been in England during the war and had been billeted in the village, where he had seen it and fallen in love with it.

In due course their references came through and they met Lord Drummond, who then telephoned me to say that I could proceed with the arrangements as soon as I liked. 'Rum pair,' he said. 'She's pretty ghastly, but he seems quite a decent little chap. Anyway they appear solvent. He has been offered an excellent job here in Blayddon (which is why they want the place) as a constructional engineer, so I'll give it a try. I shall be away most of the winter in any case, so I shan't see much of them, and they're willing to pay quite a tidy price.'

I heard no more from him or the Denchworths until Christmas. Mr Denchworth must have written the card, because the handwriting was different from that on all previous communications. He wrote 'Thank you for arranging this house for us. My wife calls it her Dream Ho#se. So do I. We are both well. Best wishes Marjorie and Henry Denchworth.'

I threw it away with the rest of the cards on January 6th, and thought no more about them until I had occasion to visit Lord Drummond the same month about another of the houses at Blayddon, and being free at tea time or thereabouts, decided to call on them.

Mrs Denchworth seemed pleased to see me. Her husband less so. She graciously gave me tea out of a silver tea pot, being very much the lady of the Manor, and she ordered him about more like a lackey than a husband, and scolded him for putting the milk in his own tea first. 'So common,' she said. I gathered that she was getting on his nerves a good deal, although he didn't say anything, but he went white when she disparaged Australia and corrected his accent, and looked daggers when she ordered him out of the room to get some more hot water for the tea. She however seemed oblivious of any undercurrents of strain, and was very excited about some alterations that Denchworth was doing to the house. 'He's doing them all absolutely single-handed,' she said proudly. 'Building is obviously a side-line of his and he's doing it all quite beautifully.'

When the eighteen months were up, I once again heard from Mr Denchworth.

'My wife and I are not renewing the lease,' he wrote. 'We have been very happy here, and Lord Drummond has been an excellent landlord, but my wife wishes to travel. England gets too cold for her in the winter; she is used to the sun, so we are off to Honolulu in a few weeks' time.'

I happened to run into Lord Drummond shortly after this in St James' Street. After the usual greetings, I remarked that I had heard from the Denchworths, and enquired whether he wished to re-let the house.

'Don't see why not,' he said. 'It was quite a success. They were no trouble at all. Devoted to each other apparently, and kept themselves to themselves. Can't understand it really. Each one to his taste and all that, but she wasn't my idea of a perfect mate. Talk, talk, talk, mean with the purse strings, and years older than he. What's more she made him drop the job for this Honolulu business, and he waf well liked in the village. Spent quite a lot of money on the house too, which seems a waste under the circumstances. Splendid for me though, of course, so no complaints. First class constructional engineer they tell me. First class. Ah well, it takes all sorts. All sorts.' He waved his umbrella at me, and we parted.

I only saw Denchworth once again. I had been sent to Jamaica on business, and while I was there, I went to Round Hill for a drink and a swim. Round Hill is one of the most luxurious hotels in the world, and Denchworth looked prosperous and happy. He seemed surprised to see me, but very affable, and enquired after Lord Drummond. I told him that his lordship was well, and not unnaturally asked after his wife. At once his face clouded. 'She's dead,' he said sadly, 'and I miss her terribly.'

'I'm sorry,' I murmured. 'I had no idea.'

'Yes. Very sudden. Very sudden. Never meet anyone like her again.'

Before I could question him further, a very pretty girl came up to talk to him, and since I was now getting late for my business appointment, I hurried away, and soon forgot all about him.

And that was the last I ever saw of him.

I heard from him however, the other day. The letter was posthumous, and it read as follows.

'My dear Andrews, This is rather a delicate matter, and I hesitate to write directly to Lord Drummond, but I think he ought to be told. You will remember that you were good enough to arrange that my wife and I were able to rent his house, Milton House in Blayddon, some few years ago, and his Lordship was very kind to us. Among other things he was good enough to let me do some decorations and alterations. The house needed modernising; actually it needed more bathrooms, and we put these in at our own expense. Lord Drummond expressed himself delighted, which pleased me. What might distress him however, should he or anyone else do any further structural alterations, is that my wife is walled up between the bathroom and the dressing-room of the principal bedroom suite. (My wife always said that 'bedroom suite' was a revolting expression, but I can't describe what I mean more accurately.)

'I married my wife for her money, because, as she quite rightly used to say, I was too lazy to like work. She never stopped nagging at me for this, though what she thought I or anyone else would have married her for at her age, and with her looks, I can't imagine. After five almost intolerable years, I determined to get rid of her. I thought out ways and means, as any murderer must do, and was beginning to despair of arranging it, when an English friend, whom I had met when I was in the Air Force in Britain during the war, wrote to me, and offered me a job in his newly opened factory in Blayddon. Here was my chance.

'You see Milton House was the perfect house for my scheme. I knew it well from the days when I was stationed at Blayddon, and it was also extremely convenient for the job at the factory. Now if it transpired that the house was empty, I was on my way to my heart's desire. I wrote to my friend enquiring about this, and he told me that I was in luck. So I accepted his offer and you know the rest.

'I had a little difficulty persuading my wife to come to you before she herself had seen the house — but she was delighted to be back in the old country — since she herself as you know, was English, and she was also in her own way rather moved that I seemed to want to settle down to earn my own living. I told her that I had fallen in love with Milton, that it was all that I had ever dreamed of as a home, and the perfect setting for her. And indeed that is precisely in the end what it turned out to be.

'Even without Lord Drummond's co-operation in allowing me to make my alterations, Milton was full of possibilities, but he of course made everything plain sailing. I had well remembered from my war-time visits the secret passage, dating from the Civil War, in the side of the great open fireplace in the drawing-room, and I remembered how the chimney itself, on its way to the outer air, encroached in a great bay of brick, into the principal bedroom. I only needed to tell my wife that the bay of brick gave the room character, for her to disagree violently, and demand that it be hidden. It was in fact ugly, and Lord Drummond who has considerable taste readily agreed to the wall being built out level with it on either side, especially as one of the two hollow spaces so formed, was to be part of the new bathroom —

'My wife's body is in the other.

I won't bore you with details, but when the time came, I inveigled her into this space, hit her on the head with what is commonly known as a blunt instrument, walled her up, and there she still is.

'Her disappearance was unremarked, because a few weeks previously she had bought an extremely expensive house in Honolulu, which of course I have since sold at a reasonable profit, and also because I had the foresight to suggest that my wife should go to London a week ahead of me, to buy clothes, and so far as anyone in Blayddon knew, I drove her to London with all her luggage, to have her little feminine shopping spree. (Her luggage is I presume, still at Paddington station, at the left luggage office, unlabelled of course.)

'By the time this reaches you, I shall alas have rejoined her, "in the bourne from which no traveller", etc., which simply means in the flowery language that my wife liked so much, that I shall be dead. I have been ill for a year now, and the doctors have pronounced me incurable.

I have enjoyed my all too short time on my late wife's money, very much, and among other things I have been able to repay countless kindnesses, since the bank believes my wife to be alive still; her handwriting being fortunately a very easy one to copy.

Lord Blayddon's kindness also requires repayment. Hence this letter.

Yours sincerely, Henry Denchworth.

'PS. I got the idea of walling her up more or less by chance, and since I have come this far in my confession to you, I might as well go further, and tell you that she is my fourth victim.

The remains of my mother and sister are under the cement floor of number 104 Perregrine Place, South Yarra, Melbourne (Australia). I was making alterations to our own home at the time and this seemed an ideal place for the disposal of the bodies. Like my wife they were d&minating women against whom in the end I had to rebel. My third victim was a girl I got into the family way. (Another expression my wife regarded as vulgar.) This murder was discovered, since in order to dispose of her body I had dismembered her and hidden various portions of her anatomy round an isolated farm some seventy miles north of Sydney. Her headless torso in a brown paper flour bag was unfortunately not well enough buried, and again unfortunately, the owner of the farm was executed for the crime since it was not known that I had been in the district that night.

'So you will understand that when it came to the point of deciding to kill my wife, I wished to go back to method A, which had been so successful.

'There was one worrying change in the circumstances of the last murder, however, and I must say that for a couple of days I was in considerable distress. I told you that I had hit my wife on the head with a blunt instrument, before walling her up. Well I didn't hit her hard enough, and once incarcerated she came to (imagine!) and for two and a half days she screamed, banged on the wall and tried to get free. Worrying for me to say the least and it nearly upset the arrangements. However in the end all was well.

'PPS. My wife considered postscripts both vulgar and effeminate. She had a theory that if one had anything interesting to say one automatically contained it in the letter itself. I trust I haven't bored you. H.D.'